Our 24 Family Ways: A Family Devotional Guide

This book takes you through 24 principals in scripture. It is layed out to help you ask your children questions about how different situations in life should be handled, then lead your children through scriptures and gives questions about how to apply the principal in their life. Each of the 24 lessons has 5 days layed out, so 24 weeks. You could do a 6th day recap. There are pictures to copy for coloring and memory verse cards in the back also! In 22 years old parenting, I have finally found a gem!

If only we all thought to write business plans for our families. What do you want your family to be like? What kind of culture do you want y our family to have? What core values are important to help your family thrive and grow closer together? That is what the Clarksons did when they wrote this book. They shared with us their plan for teaching their family members to respect each other, encourage one another, and learn to be a blessing to others in society. This book is a treasure and I love to gift it to young families so that they can catch this vision.

I have a lot Sally Clarkson's books for motherhood that are amazing and thought I'd give this one a try with the entire family. I love the coloring pages (I scan and print them so my kids can color them multiple times) and how everything is laid out. So easy to follow the lesson and questions to engage everyone. Love this!! I have 3 kids that are 5 and under and they aren't always cooperative, but it's easy enough to busy them with the coloring page and go over the devotional. Our family is growing and changing in our relationships with the Lord and one another!

I plan to use this book to disciple my grandchildren. It contains everything needed for great and FUN teaching! It uses simple on sofa but there is plenty of Bible to back up the concepts. You can easily tailor it to the ages or needs of the children you are working with! I homeschooled my three boys and have rarely seen such great material in such an easily-accessed format.

This is a wonderful resource for parents! I didn't grow up in the church and didn't grow spiritually in the previous churches that I went to so I wasn't equipped to dig deep into God's word with my children. I am so grateful God sent this book to me. I really see the fruit in my kids💗

This is a very helpful tool. The schedule and material is well laid out, easy to follow, and customizable. I love all things Sally Clarkson. I wish I had gotten this earlier. I love all the verses that are used with the ways. I appreciate all of the thought provoking questions and ways to relate the scripture to real life. We have been using this for four weeks with our 4, 8, 8, and 10 year old. I especially like the focused prayer suggestions. Great addition to any home.

Don’t judge the book by the cover. The bare risk in it is great. I love the questions and it works really well for multi-age families. My only “complaint” is that the look (cover, font, illustrations, etc) look like they were never updated after the first publishing. It’s not a big deal as the content is great, but I have to tell my friends specifically that it’s a great book for today’s generation despite how it looks.

Wow! This is an amazing family devotional. We recently lost my grandfather that was our fifth member to our family. Now as a family of four we are trying to relearn our family ways. This is the perfect thing. God has used this book in a mighty way. We are on week 3 and are already seeing so much growth! I cannot recommend this devotional enough!

This is a very easy to follow, comprehensive devotional. It is concise in order to deliver each point to kids who may even have short attention spans, but you could also discuss the points as long as you wish. It is nice to have all of these truths in one source. I love it.

As a family we are really enjoying this biblical family devotional. It is so well written and from the heart of parents who really care and love their children and wanting to share this with others. I love how every 'family way' character that you talk through together is so in depth and offers so many ways to have great conversations with your children and to line up those thoughts with biblical scripture and prayer. Thank you so much Clay and Sally Clarkson for your wonderful family ministry.

This book takes you through 24 principals in scripture. It is layed out to help you ask your children questions about how different situations in life should be handled, then lead your children through scriptures and gives questions about how to apply the principal in their life. Each of the 24 lessons has 5 days layed out, so 24 weeks. You could do a 6th day recap. There are pictures to copy for coloring and memory verse cards in the back also! In 22 years old parenting, I have finally found a gem!

If only we all thought to write business plans for our families. What do you want your family to be like? What kind of culture do you want y our family to have? What core values are important to help your family thrive and grow closer together? That is what the Clarksons did when they wrote this book. They shared with us their plan for teaching their family members to respect each other, encourage one another, and learn to be a blessing to others in society. This book is a treasure and I love to gift it to young families so that they can catch this vision.

I have a lot Sally Clarkson's books for motherhood that are amazing and thought I'd give this one a try with the entire family. I love the coloring pages (I scan and print them so my kids can color them multiple times) and how everything is laid out. So easy to follow the lesson and questions to engage everyone. Love this!! I have 3 kids that are 5 and under and they aren't always cooperative, but it's easy enough to busy them with the coloring page and go over the devotional. Our family is growing and changing in our relationships with the Lord and one another!

I plan to use this book to disciple my grandchildren. It contains everything needed for great and FUN teaching! It uses simple on sofa but there is plenty of Bible to back up the concepts. You can easily tailor it to the ages or needs of the children you are working with! I homeschooled my three boys and have rarely seen such great material in such an easily-accessed format.

This is a wonderful resource for parents! I didn't grow up in the church and didn't grow spiritually in the previous churches that I went to so I wasn't equipped to dig deep into God's word with my children. I am so grateful God sent this book to me. I really see the fruit in my kids💗

This is a very helpful tool. The schedule and material is well laid out, easy to follow, and customizable. I love all things Sally Clarkson. I wish I had gotten this earlier. I love all the verses that are used with the ways. I appreciate all of the thought provoking questions and ways to relate the scripture to real life. We have been using this for four weeks with our 4, 8, 8, and 10 year old. I especially like the focused prayer suggestions. Great addition to any home.

Don’t judge the book by the cover. The bare risk in it is great. I love the questions and it works really well for multi-age families. My only “complaint” is that the look (cover, font, illustrations, etc) look like they were never updated after the first publishing. It’s not a big deal as the content is great, but I have to tell my friends specifically that it’s a great book for today’s generation despite how it looks.

Wow! This is an amazing family devotional. We recently lost my grandfather that was our fifth member to our family. Now as a family of four we are trying to relearn our family ways. This is the perfect thing. God has used this book in a mighty way. We are on week 3 and are already seeing so much growth! I cannot recommend this devotional enough!

This is a very easy to follow, comprehensive devotional. It is concise in order to deliver each point to kids who may even have short attention spans, but you could also discuss the points as long as you wish. It is nice to have all of these truths in one source. I love it.

As a family we are really enjoying this biblical family devotional. It is so well written and from the heart of parents who really care and love their children and wanting to share this with others. I love how every 'family way' character that you talk through together is so in depth and offers so many ways to have great conversations with your children and to line up those thoughts with biblical scripture and prayer. Thank you so much Clay and Sally Clarkson for your wonderful family ministry.

Love this devotional from a wonderful family. I love listening to sally Clarkson help me get through the day with God. I heard about this amazing devotional for my kids and i💗💗

We have really enjoyed this! I love that each lesson has a coloring page so my little kids can color while we are discussing!

We love this devotions guide. Love the fact it makes you get your Bible out, and look and read scripture. Easy enough for my 7 year old, in depth enough for my husband and myself. Great family time.

I ADORE this book and what it is doing for our family. Great for setting the standard for your family and sharing the gospel in a child and family friendly way.

We've used this book with our five children for several years now and love it. Our kids also enjoy the coloring book that correlates with this devotional. I highly recommend this for families looking for a devotional tool for their young children.

My daughter asked for this book & was very happy to receive it.

We include this along with our devotional, bible reading, morning read aloud, and anything else I can include into our day. We’ve also used this in our Sunday school at church when we struggled with material to teach. It was a great source to teach and engage. I also have a book to another Sunday school leader at our church and he was thrilled about it.

Wonderful book. Love using it with our family. A must have resource.

great

This is fabulous for families! You can purchase a coloring book to go with this but the color pages are in the back of this book. It’s set up well. We have children ranging from 6 months to almost 8 and all 5 will sit and go through this together (sometimes better than others) but seems understandable for various ages.

We are really loving this book. It's concise and takes us about 10 minutes to do as a family. I love the idea of setting up a standard for who our family is character wise- this book will definitely help you with that. Totally recommend.

This is a wonderful devotional. Very bible focused. Clarkson’s are awesome! Thank you for a great resource!

We haven’t got too far in this book, but we’re already starting to see some good things and conversations come from this book. Thanks!

Our family loves this devotional! We have a lot of children that range from teens to newborn and everyone can take something from this family devotional!

Good but just a lot

This is an excellent resource for families! We are using this as our family devotional time and it really is giving us all language for the ways we want to live and treat one another and others.

I love anything the Clarkson's write, but this is especially user friendly and PERFECT for family Bible time with young kids - our kids are currently 7, 5, 3, and 2 months. There are coloring pages in the back that you can make copies of for your kids and they love coloring while we read. :)

We love this devotional. It’s very straight forward and easy to do. We do it with our breakfast and have intentional conversation. This is how we start our homeschool days!

Couldn't be more on track with the Word of God and has concise, short guides to help faciltiate devotions and discussions with our kids. Love the Clarksons.

I homeschool our 8 children. We start our days in group devotions lead by me and I am always looking for good material to jump start us into the Bible. Also, I need something that is good for a variety of ages. We are enjoying this book very much. I also bought the coloring books to go with it for my ytounger children and that have memory verse cards you can print off of their web site. Great family product.

This book provided meaningful conversation starters for our family. It helped shape who we are as a family and who we want to be. I would highly recommend this book.

It's good, though harder to get into.

Love this book for teaching values to our kids. We read it as a devotional after meals.

Amazing book for teaching the family about how to work together, love each other, over look faults, etc from a scriptural stand point. My kids loved the coloring pages and i love how simple it is to do.

Wish I had bought this years ago when I first looked at it. Very basic but so nice to be able to just open the book and go. We do the devotional over breakfast. Love the list.

I originally gave this four stars, but if I could I'd lower my rating because the more I think about it, the more certain aspects of it bother me. It is clear that Clay Clarkson has truly the best of intentions. And it's difficult to critique a devotional book honestly when you agree with the mission -- just not the delivery. I think devotions are a vital part of raising your family. I also think that breaking it down into these sort of "Mission Statements" about the legacy you want your children to take into the world gives the devotions relevance and obvious significance. I like the family ways Clarkson chose, because I think they give great guidance, and we will definitely return to these as my children get older. It's just... again sorry if it sounds mean... a little goofy. I don't know how many times I have asked one of the starter questions, and either had my family respond with either "WHAT??!!!" or laughter. Now, we're not a particularly cynical or sarcastic bunch, it's just how these are worded. One of the earliest examples from Family Way 1, "If you had a 'pocket parent' card that played a short digital message every 30 minutes, what would you want to hear? Not hear?" This was just responded to with a great big "HUH???" Surely there is a better way to word these. Another, from Family Way 6, "What would you think about a child who had an adult body? Why?" And from 7 "Sing an 'Amen' chorus loudly with off-pitch disharmony. Then sing it in unison and with harmony. What is the difference?" First off, you have to know an 'Amen' chorus tune to know what disharmony to sing. Also, you have to kids old enough to know harmony and disharmony. I just had my kids sing a song we all knew the wrong way. But what irritates me is that I think some of the "lessons" are way off. Sometimes dangerously so. For example, from Family Way 8, day 4, Clarkson paraphrases 1 John 4:19-21 as John reflecting "the teachings of Jesus about loving our fellow Christians." Really? Just "our fellow Christians"? That's not what I'd taken from this passage all the times I'd read it before. And if that's the case, then our mission wouldn't reach very far. I don't think it's just a typo, though, because in the "Speak to God" section for the same day, he writes again, "Ask God to help you love your family and other CHRISTIANS" (emphasis mine). No, we are expected to love the non-Christians too, to demonstrate Christ-like love to them. The Story Starters are also quite annoying. In fact, I just skip over them. It's so obvious what the answer is supposed to be that they don't really lend to discussion. The Bible verses are usually good, though, and back up the Family Ways appropriately, and that is the most important issue. So I do think that this is ultimately a good purchase. Just be prepared to skip over or modify and paraphrase the questions. Or maybe laugh... that's good too.

5 year old not focused enough to add this in to our homeschool curriculum.

Such a wonderful family study that focuses on building your family around God!

A great devotional time for all families! This is an important tool for any age children. The earlier the better, but still very helpful later on.

Good discussion starters, excellent content. My kids are 5 and 6 and they are memorizing the family ways with no trouble. Some of the devotional questions and topics are more suitable for older kids, but we don't mind that because we will keep using this throughout their years at home.

This has been good for my kids!

This devotional is laid out wonderfully. I love that they have all the engaging questions already laid out fo us to ask the kids!

This is a great family devotion guide! My children are all 7 and younger. I thought it was a little too "advanced" for their ages to fully understand and answer some of the questions and concepts. We will be going back to this great resource as a family when they are a little older!

Great family devotion and easy to follow!

We love the way this book is laid out in weekly portions. Clay and Sally Clarkson are wonderful resources for being pointed straight back to the word of God on all things, and not just their own opinions. :)

So grateful for this family resource. Can be used as a daily Bible study aid. We are currently using it for our homeschool. Clearly outlined for the parent and includes excellent supplemental items-like coloring sheets and scripture memory cards-- for the kids.

The best, every family should have this!!

My husband and I love this devotional so much. We have a five and an eight year old and we have all really enjoyed our devotion time together with this book. We are on Way Number 3 and loving it!

Our family has been moving through this devotion book for 3 weeks now. We have 3 children ranging from age 3-10. We are very much enjoying learning together. This is the first devotion book that we have used that has captured the attention of everyone in the family. There is absolutely nothing to prepare either; we can just open the book and our Bibles and get started.

Did not like the format and had a hard time figuring out how this was even intended to be used.

We are enjoying this devotional with our three kids.

Great for family devotional night

I wanted to like this book as so many families recommended this book, but I was disappointed. I liked the idea of asking a question to start each week & focusing on a trait each week. My husband liked that the lessons were short (which made them doable), but the lessons never transpired to developing better character in my family.

This book was supposed to be new, but arrived with a sweet smelling, sticky syrup or icing all over the bottom of the book! Gross!

The front cover is completely gone.

This devotion has an overarching plan to present the full counsel of God's Word over a period of time (24 weeks of devotions (6 devotions every week). By the time you work your way through them you can go back and reinforce them. It has creative approaches that make teaching relevant and interesting to specific ages of children. It has creative ways to make family worship warm, intimate, and relational. It has a variety of ways for families to pray together. It touches on topics concerning authorities, relationships, possessions, work, attitudes, and choices. Really it's about teaching your child to live from a biblical worldview. Examples: Our Family Way #1: We love and obey our Lord, Jesus Christ, with whole-hearted devotion. Our Family Way #4: We listen to correction and accept discipline with a submissive spirit. Our Family Way #7: We encourage one another, using only words that build up and bless others. Our Family Way #9: We are thankful to God for what we have, whether it is a little or a lot. Our Family Way #13: We are diligent to complete a task promptly and thoroughly when asked. Our Family Way #17: We choose to be joyful, even when we feel like complaining. Our Family Way #21: We do what we know is right, regardless what others do or say. Just looking at these weekly focuses should make us enthusiastic about mentoring our children in God's instruction and discipline. I look forward to these devotions and it gives our table talk purpose (Deuteronomy 6:4-7).

This is a fantastic resource. Even on crazy weeks when we can only scratch the surface we still manage to have some meaningful interactions about the Family Way of the week. We are on week #14 and I look forward to starting over again at the beginning when we finish because this devotional is a pleasure to do and not a chore.

My sons are 15, 14, and 11. We are going through the Clarkson's 24 family ways after lunch each day. Honestly many of my attempts at family devotions have been met with groans. Not this time!! They enjoy the creative starter questions. They are laughing and talking and making the biblical connections that I hoped they would!

Nicely laid out with multiple questions so you can cater toward the ages of your children. Our edition came with coloring sheets in the back which is helpful for keeping little hands and minds engaged during the devotion.